Are there jobs waiting for us on the outside? Will all of the time, not to mention money, spent on obtaining an education pay off? We cannot forget that by having attended college, we have foregone possible wealth accumulation. And for many of us, the price of an education requires us to keep shoveling deeper into caverns of debt. Certainly, college has its benefits outside of enhanced job prospects — namely social networking, independent living and learning new skills. However, the overriding question for most students (and their parents) is, how effectively will this education catapult me into the upper income brackets? That is, some of us probably pondered toward the end of high school, what can I do to ensure that I’m not working at Bob’s Café in four years? The answer may not be as clear as it once seemed.
The College Board once suggested that there is a significant difference in lifetime earnings between those who choose to attend college and those who defer higher education. The company reported on its website that the gap could be as large as $800,000. However, in a recent article published by The Wall Street Journal, this number was refuted by several leading economists and a more accurate estimate was determined to be $250,000. The College Board has since updated its website and removed the figure.
Under normal circumstances, discounting any era of irrational exuberance (see: 2000-2007), a solid education from a four-year university would have automatically implied higher lifetime earnings. In the land before time, when words such as “recession” or “unemployed” were most often reserved for our grandparents’ fireside chats, attending college was a no-brainer. One didn’t have to look very far to see how Suzy the high-school dropout was faring. She was likely asking whether you wanted fries with your burger. But times have changed. No longer is it entirely unimaginable to stumble across a recent graduate in Suzy’s position. I personally know of friends and family members who graduated in the thick of the recent economic downturn, and they skip about from odd job to odd job, mail out mountains of job applications and entrust their hopes and dreams to chance. Like victims of a Venus Flytrap — the flytrap being the economy — their wings are stuck in a thick sludge of missed opportunities and waning job prospects.
What do the current employment numbers suggest? According to its most recent data, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the unemployment rate for 20- to 24-year-olds stands at 15.2 percent. That is more than six percentage points higher than the national unemployment rate.
However, what the data doesn’t tell you is how many people are underemployed, working part-time jobs or simply clinging to whatever is available. The fundamental problem facing recent graduates has evolved with the changing landscape: It is not so much a question of what kind of job will I get, but when will I get a job?
The weak job market is certainly not applicable to every student. Many soon-to-be graduates will or already have located employment. At the same time, there are many students who will have lost out on productive employment due to an outsized demand of jobs and limited supply. It is imperative that students do everything in their power to develop a truly diverse skill set that allows them to compete in a global economy. But perhaps more importantly, when jobs are this scarce, we may just have to create our own.
Steven Spinello is a junior economics major. He can be reached at spinello at umdbk dot com.
